If swimming pools and Popsicles aren't keeping you cool enough, try taking in the Akron Art Museum's Arctic Re-Visions: Isaac Julien's True North. The polar-themed audio-visual installation on display through Oct. 3 tells the story of the 1909 expedition to find the North Pole, a discovery for which explorer Robert Peary's African-American assistant Matthew Henson, who actually arrived 45 minutes ahead of Peary, and four Inuit guides did not originally receive credit. British filmmaker Isaac Julien's 14-minute video abstractly interprets Henson as a woman wandering an icy, barren landscape. "This person stands for all of the people who were left out of the discovery," explains Ellen Rudolph, the Akron Art Museum's curator of exhibitions. The video will play on three screens simultaneously in one of the special exhibition galleries and is the museum's first large-scale multimedia installation. Here are some of the numbers behind the art.
101:Number of years since Matthew Henson arrived at the North Pole ahead of Robert Peary
5: Number of years the Akron Art Museum has owned Isaac Julien's installation
-30: Approximate temperature in degrees Fahrenheit at the North Pole at the time of its discovery
2,445: Approximate number of times the video will repeat throughout the duration of the exhibit
9: Number of sled dogs trekking through Iceland and Sweden, where the film was shot (the real expedition traveled through Greenland)
